Southern California -- this just in

New UC logo getting savaged in online campaign

December 10, 2012 | 2:29
pm

Criticism continued to build Monday against the UC system's new logo, fueled in part by an online campaign.

“Anyone who has ever looked at a Mac
screen has been frustrated by a loading sign,” said David Bocarsly, UCLA student body
president. “It’s ironic that this
frustration is conveyed in the logo. I don’t think it was intentional."

“It looks like a loading symbol, and
all the frustration that comes with it in modern society.”

Like
so many students and young alumni, Tomo Hirai, a 24-year-old UC Davis graduate,
first saw the new logo in a newspaper article linked on his Facebook wall. He
fixated on the swooping yellow “C,” and then it hit him.

About 30 minutes
on Adobe Photoshop was all it took to turn the system’s artistic effort into an
animated GIF. Hirai tweeted his work out on Friday, among the first to
publicly mock the new logo.

“It cheapened
the entire UC System,” Hirai said of the UC team’s design. “That’s not
what you do to 144 years of history.”

Creators of an online petition
opposed to the change say the new logo "loses the prestige and elegance
of the current seal." They want the 10-campus system to use the
traditional circular medallion that shows an open book, the motto “Let
There Be Light” and the 1868 date of UC’s founding. Or find a dignified
alternative. The petition has more than 39,000 supporters so far.

UC system spokeswoman Dianne Klein said that critics wrongly assume
that UC is eliminating the traditional symbol. In fact, that will remain
on all diplomas and official correspondence, such as presidential
letters, among other uses. But she said the old logo does not reproduce
well in small size on Internet pages and that UC wanted something more
visually contemporary and versatile, especially for online efforts to
seek donations and recruit applicants.

“Like anything with design and change, people have opinions,” Klein
said. She added that alumni, students and parents were consulted about
the new design, which was created by an in-house design team at no extra
cost to the university.